


Who am I in the Aftermath?

by jxdkid



Category: Lancer (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Clones, Gen, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22599499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jxdkid/pseuds/jxdkid
Summary: A mech pilot contemplates the nature of the self after being cloned following his untimely death
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Who am I in the Aftermath?

It’s lights out aboard the Parabellum, as far as I’m aware I’m the only one still awake, staring at my own face in the mirror. His face. our face? I am wearing a dead man’s face, and that dead man was me, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. One month ago I woke up in a vat, after a dream, that was a memory, of my own death. I was piloting an SSC Monarch mech laying down ordinance keeping the enemy in their foxholes, we were hired to combat some workers’ rebellion on a mining asteroid, I couldn’t tell you then or now if we were the good guys that day, but I hardly think it matters especially since the pay was so good. I was so busy applying pressure I didn’t notice that one of them had gotten through, piloting a mining mech modified beyond recognition into a Horus Kobold, its camouflage allowed it to climb the cliffs around me unnoticed until it was close enough to sling molten slag into my missile caches, quickly hardening into solid rock. I didn’t have time to react, I had already set another barrage to launch, but with nowhere to go, I was engulfed in fire, and then nothing, and then the vat.

I don’t know if I am the same man who died, I have his memories, I have his face and body, his friends, his allergies, his fears, and his name. In all ways I am him, but he has died, and I am here, very much alive, staring at the face we share. If I am not the same man, is this my chance to be a better man? And if I am is that any reason not to be better? Had he survived, but I was still here, with his memories, his face and body, his allergies, his fears, and his name, how would others tell us apart? Could they tell us apart, or is the self so meaningless that it can be manufactured so completely? And what should be made of the parts of me that aren’t his? I can’t look at an SSC Monarch the same way he did, everything feels different: the controls less confident, the ordinance more volatile, the systems less precise, the warnings more dire. I can’t pilot it like I used to, like he used to. I’ve never piloted it like that, I was grown in a vat only a month ago, but I remember the way I used to, the way he used to, I know how its supposed to feel in the cockpit of a Monarch, like freedom and power, but all I feel is a paralyzing weight and crippling doubt. He never felt that, but I do. The doc said it was a natural trauma response, but had he survived would he be feeling the same way?

I don’t know if I am the same man who died, and I don’t know which I fear most, the idea that I’m not, or the idea that I am.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a first draft of an idea I had. I decided to post it so that I can get used to the idea of putting my ideas out into the world. Feedback would be appreciated as well as possible suggestions of where I should go with this.


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